Tech

Funny-Looking Coat Turns Away Spying Electronic Eyes

If you always wanted Harry Potter's invisibility cloak but wished it was a bit comfier, your wish may have come true.

Austrian architecture firm Coop-Himmelblau has designed a Snuggie-like piece of clothing that jams the wearer's phone, effectively rendering him invisible. The Jammer Coat shields the phone from wireless signals, so the device becomes undetectable to things like search engines or tracking software, and there's no way for anyone to pull credit card information.

The code is basically a Faraday cage, with metals embedded in the fabric that reflect incoming radio waves, protecting the wearer from unwittingly sharing any information on any device beneath it.

Apparently, one of the cloak's most useful features is its lumpy pattern, which acts as a disguise for would-be phone hackers and thieves.

"The Wave Circle pattern of the fabric gives an illusion of strange multiple body parts, which hides and frees the individual physicality," the product's website states.

Whether or not anyone ever buys the Jammer Coat, it's certainly another symptom of the ongoing privacy-vs-surveillance debate, exemplified by people who want to be "forgotten" by Google and similar web trackers, and the increasing presence of drones and other surveillance technology.

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